This week’s theme
Words with multiple meanings

This week’s words
arete
coprology
noodle
hock
gamy


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PRONUNCIATION:

(GAY-mee)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Having the flavor or odor of game, especially game meat.
2. Having the flavor or odor of meat kept until slightly tainted.
3. Ill-smelling; rank.
4. Sordid, seamy, corrupt, or disreputable.
5. Suggestive or racy.
6. Plucky or spirited.

ETYMOLOGY:

From game (wild animals hunted for food or sport; fighting spirit). Earliest documented use: 1820.

NOTES:

Not to be confused with -gamy, as in monogamy and bigamy, which is from Greek gamos (marriage). This gamy comes from game. Still, with so many senses under one roof, the word is practicing a kind of lexical polygamy.

USAGE:

“Usually we keep an anxious eye on sell-by dates to avoid gamy meat.”
Taryn White; The Mother of Soul Food; Smithsonian (Washington, DC); Jun 2023.

“The film [Oldboy], directed by Park Chanwook, has a gamy, ill-lit seediness.”
Anthony Lane; Revenge; The New Yorker; Mar 28, 2005.

“[Conrad] Black once described its success as being based on a formula that includes ... ‘presenting Britain’s gamiest, kinkiest, most salacious, and most scatological news with apparent sobriety but with the most explicit, almost sadistic detail.’”
Brenda Dalglish; A Bite of the Big Apple; Maclean’s (Toronto, Canada); Jun 8, 1992.

“[Gerald Zukowski of Putnam Capital Appreciation]: I’m buying some really gamy little companies.”
Eric J. Savitz; Simply the Best; Barron’s (New York); Jul 21, 1997.

See more usage examples of gamy in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: